1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the development of educational course plans and course material in general, and to a system and method of developing such course plans and materials through an online collaboration environment.
2. Description of Related Art
Typically, course development processes for online higher education are either expensive and time consuming, or inexpensive, quick, and low quality. To produce quality rich media and world class content, these processes absorb multiple high-end internal and external resources in the form of course developers, content experts, instructional designers, and media producers. Even with heavy media production, the majority of the cost of the development goes to design, in the form of course summits and highly compensated teams of developers, consultants and faculty.
Alternatively, many online courses are developed by a single faculty member with few resources. Even with rich media, the development team typically consists of no more than two individuals: a “course developer,” usually a faculty member, and a “designer,” often an instructional designer or rich media producer. The course developer generates a course overview or course outline based upon specified learning objectives, and writes the course in a text-based format. The designer may then add data objects, such as web-pages, documents, and audio/video clips, to create the course. The course is then accessed through the web by the student at his or her remote learning station.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2004/0157193, issued Aug. 12, 2004 to Mejias et al., describes a course development system whereby an electronic course overview is generated, placeholder web pages are added to mirror the course structure, course content is produced for each learning object and the learning objects are then embedded into the placeholder web pages.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003/0040949, issued Feb. 27, 2003 to Baccaro et al, describes a method for course development wherein course developers, a content manager and content developer, design and develop a training course, evaluate the training course created and revise the training course to satisfy the principles of effective learning.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003/0074370, issued Apr. 17, 2003 to Gargano et al., describes a system for object-based delivery of online courses generated through the use of new content, existing content or the combination of newly entered and existing content.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003/0009742, issued Jan. 9, 2003 to Bass et al., describes a tool that enables those charged with instruction and training to develop a web-based training course without any formal training, either individually or jointly in synchronous or asynchronous modes. The tool utilizes a virtual environment, chat rooms and an information and objects area for course development collaboration.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,590,360, issued Dec. 31, 1996 to Edwards, describes a software program operating on a local area network that allows multiple users to enter information in response to an ordered sequence of screens, to store entered information into a database and to format the information stored into a computer-based model of processes and data.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2007/0016650, issued Jan. 18, 2007 to Gilbert et al., describes a method for collaborative authorship and delivery of instructional materials to a content database for an educational course. Authors may add, modify, upload or download content and may receive server updates on the activities of other authors in real time.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2005/0123892, issued Jun. 9, 2005 to Cornelius et al., describes a system for developing interactive simulation-based training products that gives a developer the ability to create a training product from scratch or through the use of libraries, edit the program and associated interactive objects, as well as develop an evaluation system to create or modify evaluation criteria for the progress of the trainee, a support materials system and a reviewer used to execute a portion or all of a training course.
With the increasing use of online educational courses throughout the world, there is a commensurate need to develop courses efficiently and in a cost-effective manner, as well as to produce courses that provide accurate, high-quality, complete and up-to-date course content to students.